Chapter 529: Ill-Intentioned Visitors, Well-Intentioned Visitors—Universal Megacorp Is the True Visitor!
Out in deep space, Trisolaris was like a massive meteor, following the fleet of the Universal Megacorp as it sped toward the dark matter wormhole.
During this process, the gravitational pull of the three suns of the Trisolaran system constantly tugged and wrestled with the planet's trajectory. This powerful and complex gravitational system had once been the Trisolarans' endless nightmare.
But the Universal Megacorp had long since mastered the art of dealing with stellar gravity. Not only could they overcome the pull of three stars, they could also easily avoid the orbital interference of these three dying suns, leading Trisolaris steadily northward.
To counteract the immense stellar gravity, the planetary engines were systematically activated at full power, entering the maximum-thrust phase.
The brightness of the plasma beams suddenly increased severalfold. The temperature of the planet's surface began to rise again, while the emitted blue-white light illuminated the entire sky as bright as day.
The Trisolarans who had been hiding in underground shelters began awakening their companions one by one, rushing up to the surface to dance and cheer before the planetary-scale engines.
Clearly, these engines had already become the new totem of faith for Trisolaran civilization.
In the years to come, Trisolaran myths and nursery rhymes would tell of over five thousand divine pillars channeling divine power, leading their world safely through heavenly tribulation.
This tale, full of magnificent fantasy, would spread widely among the Trisolarans just as the story of Noah's Ark spread across the Western world, or the tale of Nüwa repairing the heavens spread across China.
"Perhaps human religions were born in the same way. Once upon a time, some benevolent, compassionate higher civilization must have given humanity the seed of evolution and the strength of faith.
"But the gods died, leaving behind only hazy, metaphor-laden myths."
Luo Ji sighed. In just a few short weeks, he had witnessed the birth of religiousness faith within Trisolaran society. With the First Consul's centralized control gone, the Trisolarans had truly entered an age of ideological evolution.
Their racial talent was awakening, being fulfilled.
Paul remained silent. His homeland, the Dune universe, had also once been sheltered by this "god" called the Universal Megacorp. But the Megacorp had never deigned to use false titles like "God-Emperor" to rule the civilizations of countless universes.
This civilization, which believed in equivalent exchange, truly embodied the principles of freedom and equality. There was no outdated "divine right of kings," no crude authoritarian rule.
There was only the Megacorp's unceasing drive forward, exploring the unknown, advancing toward the gods' Eden.
Meanwhile, under the thrust of over five thousand planetary engines, Trisolaris gradually freed itself from the pull of the three suns and approached the dark matter wormhole constructed by the Megacorp
The Megacorp's expeditionary fleet entered the wormhole first, followed closely by Trisolaris itself.
In an instant, the skies of Trisolaris no longer held sun, moon, or stars. Instead, countless streaking lines and kaleidoscopic, twisted colors wove a surreal dreamscape.
It was like the visions seen in a dream—abstract, blurry, unreal. The skies of Trisolaris had turned into the wondrous dream of some child.
The Trisolarans did not panic or feel fear. They focused all their attention on each blue-glowing planetary engine. As long as the blue-white beams did not vanish, their inner strength would not falter.
Trisolaris quickly and calmly leapt across the dark matter ocean, traversed higher dimensions, and sped through the wormhole toward the solar system.
After two weeks of wormhole travel, the Trisolaran civilization finally arrived at the solar system they had dreamed of for so long.
From the highest elites to the common folk, they now stood at Eden's gate. When the warm sun rose once again, bringing light and heat to their frozen land—
The Trisolarans no longer felt fear. Here there was no second sun, no chaotic phenomenon of three suns in the sky. The dawn of hope for survival had arrived.
At that moment, all Trisolarans erupted into cheers, their excited, frenzied brainwaves scattering everywhere. From now on, they would never again endure chaotic eras. They would forever live in the stable climate of an eternal regular era.
Over two hundred cycles of destruction and rebirth had finally come to an end. The stable and prosperous solar system was enough for Trisolaran civilization to enter a true golden age of flourishing.
Just as the Trisolarans prepared to rehydrate their desiccated, dormant compatriots and share the prosperity of this new age, the Universal Megacorp intervened.
The Megacorp's AI forces quickly collected the desiccated Trisolarans and began concentrating the active ones in controlled zones.
After all, Trisolaran civilization was the defeated side. Sparing their species from annihilation was already a concession to their evolutionary potential—and to the Megacorp's sense of benevolence.
The megacorp rarely committed genocidal acts, but that did not mean they were "soft." Facing such a dangerous adversary, they naturally had to impose a series of deterrents, suppressions, and acts of subjugation.
"What are you planning to do?"
Luo Ji frowned, watching the AI sentry robots round up the Trisolarans. He thought Paul meant to set up concentration camps, to simply incinerate them.
That would vent humanity's hatred and also reduce both risks and management burdens.
After all, there were billions of Trisolarans.
"First, we'll tally their exact numbers. Then we'll forcibly place the vast majority into desiccated dormancy and store them in biological repositories, leaving only a few tens of thousands active."
Paul answered.
The Trisolarans were fortunate to possess the desiccation-dormancy ability, which made centralized management particularly convenient.
Otherwise, the Megacorp would surely have found ways to kill off large numbers just to maintain stability.
It was the only viable solution. Humanity had done the same to itself.
Two thousand years ago, General Bai Qi buried alive 400,000 surrendered Zhao troops; Xiang Yu slaughtered 200,000 captured Qin soldiers. At their core, these acts stemmed from limited management capacity—reducing potential threats.
Forcing the Trisolarans into desiccated dormancy was far better than throwing them into crematoria.
What's more, Trisolaran thought was evolving rapidly. They would soon cease to be the naïve, straightforward species they once were. If vast numbers of them entered human society at once, it would inevitably cause unnecessary trouble.
Luo Ji nodded thoughtfully. This was indeed the best arrangement possible.
The few Trisolarans allowed to remain awake would be the first lucky ones to come into contact with human civilization.
After personally witnessing the miracles wrought by the Megacorp, they would naturally regard it as the savior of their civilization, paying their highest respect to the Enterprise's supreme leader.
And what Li Ang had to do was support this group in establishing a new Trisolaran social order.
On one hand, he would use free religious faith as a low-cost tool to maintain social stability. On the other, he would systematically awaken the dormant Trisolarans, integrating them into this new Trisolaran world.
In the end, Trisolaran civilization would be transformed from within and without, becoming employees under the Universal Megacorp's banner.
Soon after Paul communicated this plan to Earth's United Nations, Chairman Garner responded by unveiling their long-prepared Sunshine Plan.
This plan primarily had several different strategic versions.
For instance, the Weak Survival Plan: placing Pluto, Neptune's moons, and other remote regions as reserved territory for the Trisolaran civilization, while only allowing a very small number of Trisolarans to live on Earth to communicate and cooperate with humanity.
This was considered the harshest plan, because it meant the Trisolarans' living conditions would be extremely poor—they would have to rely constantly on nuclear fusion energy and on resource support from the human world.
After all, Pluto is simply too far from the Sun, with hardly any light or heat available for the Trisolarans.
In the Trisolaran system, although the climate alternated between extremes of hot and cold, at the very least there was still a star providing heat and light as an energy source.
But Pluto—true to its name—was a place utterly unfit for normal life.
By contrast, under the Strong Survival Plan, the situation would be far better.
This plan would establish Mars as the home of the Trisolaran civilization and park Trisolaris itself near Mars's orbital zone. Doing so could provide the Trisolarans with a living condition second only to Earth itself.
For the Trisolarans, Mars would already be a far superior environment compared to their former home. Other survival plans fell somewhere between these two extremes.
Of course, there were also plenty of extremists among the public who insisted that all Trisolarans should be killed—or turned into humanity's slaves, providing cheap labor.
In any case, this "Sunshine Plan" had already gained the support of Earth International and Fleet International, and large-scale research and planning efforts had begun.
But for the Universal Megacorp, it hardly mattered whether it was the Weak Survival Plan or the Strong Survival Plan. After all, sooner or later, they intended to bring the Trisolarans back into the Main Universe.
Whether or not the Trisolaran Universe itself could even be preserved remained a very large question. For now, they had no need to worry about such trivial details.
What's more, the vast majority of Trisolarans had already been classified and placed into cold storage by the Megacorp according to their identity data.
Only scientists, engineers, and a small number of administrators and civilians had been awakened; the rest remained in desiccated hibernation.
What the Universal Megacorp needed was every technological point from Trisolaran civilization—especially in the microcosmic domain. This would allow the Megacorp to quickly eliminate its own technological shortcomings.
At this moment, more than five thousand planetary engines were pushing Trisolaris into its designated solar system orbit. Once the maneuver was complete, they gradually reduced power and shifted to settle it into position.
With this, the Megacorp's unification operation was officially one-third completed: they had liberated the Trisolaran civilization and seized all of its labor and technological resources!
Another powerful recruit had been added to the Megacorp's universal trade system.
Of course, it was not yet time to celebrate. The Trisolarans had been dealt with, yes, but the Solar System's coordinates had already been exposed, and a Dark Forest strike could arrive at any moment.
On this issue, a fierce internal debate broke out among the upper ranks of the Universal Megacorp.
The conservatives, led by Song Zhaomei and Lucius, argued that they should take Earth and Trisolaris and keep fleeing—leave this universe and resettle in another among the myriad heavens.
But V and Morgan Blackhand believed the risks of that were far too great. Besides, their unification campaign was still incomplete—how could they abandon it halfway?
Who said they were destined to be victims of the Dark Forest? If the visitors come with malice, then the Megacorp tself is the true visitor!
"We've already exposed our position. We may be struck at any time by other advanced civilizations. And perhaps what comes to the Solar System won't be one or two enemies, but an entire swarm!"
Song Zhaomei spoke fiercely. After a period of exploration, the AI Infinite God-Machine had confirmed with one hundred percent certainty that the danger level of this universe was the highest in recorded history.
There might not be just one or two god-level civilizations here!
"The Dark Forest strike has a delay. From exposure to the moment of attack can take years, even up to a hundred years. We have more than enough time to prepare countermeasures."
Morgan Blackhand responded calmly. Using the Solar System as bait to lure other civilizations here—yes, the risk was high, but the potential reward was enormous.
As the two sides clashed without resolution, it was finally Li Ang himself who came forward to settle the question of whether to stay or go.
The Universal Megacorp would stay—pressing forward to seize another prize!
Indeed, there were many god-level civilizations in the Trisolaran Universe—but they were the Fourth Calamity from beyond the realm!
Once the Trisolaran civilization had been stabilized, the staff of the Megacorp's Science Hub moved swiftly to inventory and collect the newly acquired technological points.
The most important technological asset was, of course, the Sophons.
The Trisolarans' sophon-production equipment, as well as their related scientists and engineers, were all in the hands of the Megacorp. With the Solar System's abundant resources, they could reproduce dozens more sophons in short order.
After awakening the Trisolarans' scientific administrators, the Megacorp personnel subjected them to a round of questioning.
Since the Trisolaran researchers had not been exposed to any external ideological influences, they had no intention of concealing anything. They spoke with complete candor.
Very soon, the Megacorp's Science Hub had absorbed the entirety of the sophon project's technology—from the unfolding of protons into two dimensions, to large-scale circuit etching, even including the Trisolarans' perception of the microcosmic dimensions.
Every step had been opened up. And with the Megacorp's advanced industrial capacity, producing sophons like dumplings was now merely a matter of time.
This was the true benefit of saving the Trisolaran civilization.
Free-riding on existing technological points would always be faster and easier than developing them independently.
Just as Steve Jobs had borrowed the Braun T3 radio's dial design to create the iPod's scroll wheel, and borrowed the simple geometric styling of the Braun LE1 speakers for the iMac and MacBook—
By blending the strengths of many sources, he had built Apple into a terrifying giant of electronic products.
The ability to integrate resources was, in itself, an exceedingly rare talent—and in this regard, Li Ang was undoubtedly a master.
Compared to the Trisolaran planet's awful environment and barren resources, it was the cold giant particle accelerators and the knowledge held by the Trisolaran scientists that were truly precious.
By absorbing these talents, the Megacorp could raise its own technological level yet another notch, patching its remaining gaps.
At this stage, the Universal Megacorp could indeed be called a god-level civilization. But in certain specific domains of technology, it still lagged behind.
That such discrepancies existed was hardly surprising.
After all, the accumulation of technological points always followed different strategic directions, and some imbalances were inevitable. This was the natural course of things.
Thus Li Ang did not consider learning from the Trisolarans' microcosmic technology to be shameful in the least. Only he knew just how delightful it was to seize something for free.
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